Lawmaker Denounces Pace of Water Cleanup Effort

More than a decade after the discovery of dangerous chemicals in the ground water of the San Gabriel Valley, the chairman of a state legislative select committee declared Wednesday that residents are fed up with the government’s failure to remedy the problem.

Assemblyman Thomas Calderon (D-Montebello) said residents are tired of paying higher bills to have their water cleaned or imported while those responsible for the pollution have yet to pony up.

“We don’t have time to wait anymore,” he said. “There hasn’t been any significant cleanup.”

Calderon’s tongue-lashing came during a special hearing of his Assembly Select Committee on San Gabriel Valley Groundwater Contamination held at South El Monte City Hall. The lawmaker castigated government officials and local executives for allowing the amount of pollution and its anticipated cleanup costs to grow.

In 1984, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared the massive aquifer underneath the San Gabriel Valley to be a Superfund site because testing showed high levels of volatile organic compounds in some of the water.

The agency later declared that 19 companies were responsible for the contaminants found below the Azusa-Baldwin Park-Irwindale area. Among the firms were Aerojet General Corp. and Huffy Co. Cleanup of the aquifer, along with other nearby sites, is expected to cost $320 million over 30 years.

Calderon on Wednesday accused the EPA and the San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority of not aggressively pursuing polluters through litigation, as has been done at other Superfund sites.

“Not a single polluter has been sued,” the lawmaker said. He added that a timely lawsuit would have revealed much sooner that a toxic rocket fuel used by Azusa-based Aerojet General had seeped into the aquifer.

It was that discovery, in 1997, that derailed an agreement among the companies to build a conventional water treatment plant to remove volatile chemicals from the aquifer. The plan was scrapped because perchlorate, the chemical in the rocket fuel, cannot be removed through traditional treatment.

Officials from the EPA and the water quality authority Wednesday defended their decision not to file suit, arguing that it was more cost-effective to work cooperatively with the companies. They said it was better for the firms to spend their money on cleanup than on lawyers.

“We want mitigation, not litigation,” Margaret Clark, chairwoman of the authority, told the committee.

Clark and others also said some progress is being made on the cleanup. They said the polluters, cities and water producers across the valley have set aside more than $30 million to address the pollution problem.

They also testified that construction began last month on a La Puente treatment plant that would be the first ever able to extract perchlorate, a chemical that can interfere with the functioning of the thyroid gland.

But that plan would only treat a small targeted area, and disagreement still exists over what to do about the water pollution throughout the valley.

Wayne Praskins, Superfund cleanup manager for the Western region of the EPA, told the committee that cleanup proposals submitted earlier this month by polluters fall short of addressing all the problems in the aquifer. The agency may override the plans, order a more comprehensive cleanup and then sue the firms to recover the costs, he said.

However, Aerojet spokesman Don Vanderkar urged government officials to seek a mutual solution with the companies.

“The only solution to the ground water problem is cooperation,” he said. “We’re very close to an agreement.”

Vanderkar said that Aerojet knew perchlorate was present at a similar defense plant in Sacramento County in the early 1990s but that only recently did state health officials say it posed a risk. He also said research showed that Aerojet was not the only source of the chemical in the San Gabriel Valley.

EPA officials have stressed that no drinking water is being drawn from contaminated wells and that all water supplied to customers meets federal standards. But to make sure, water firms are spending more money to import water or maintain expensive well-head treatment.

“That’s meant a 3% [cost] increase for our customers,” said James Gallagher of Southern California Water Co. The company spent $3 million defending itself from lawsuits by residents who alleged that the pollution harmed their health.

Water officials all agreed Wednesday that they must stop the ground water contamination spreading from the San Gabriel Valley into the central basin that serves Greater Los Angeles.